


a sinking dream

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Mentions of Canon Character (Presumed) Deaths, Relationship Problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-18
Packaged: 2018-02-13 15:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2155761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Winter Soldier, Steve and Bucky have been together for 10 years. It's not what Steve hoped. </p><p>For this prompt at comment-fic on livejournal: <i>A Sinking Dream</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	a sinking dream

Many years ago, the army told him Bucky died, but Steve went to save him anyway. And then Bucky fell, and Steve believed it was for good.

Steve was presumed dead a couple times himself, so between the two of them, they’d conquered four deaths to be together.

They survived being frozen and brainwashed and used against each other. They survived torture and war. They survived the months it took for Steve to track the Winter Soldier down, the year it took for Bucky to remember, to feel an ounce like his old self again.

Their love defeated enemies that had almost ruled the world.

Which meant that they shouldn’t be falling apart like this.

There should be gunshots and fire and explosions overhead.

Instead, a decade later, it’s dinners where they don’t say anything, just pick at heaps of food sitting at a table nicer than anything they grew up with.

There was a time when bringing up old memories from Brooklyn would have made Bucky laugh, made him grin and top it with another story. Much later, there was a time when Bucky would listen intently to Steve’s tales of growing up together, using the fragments of boyhood tales to slowly piece his own memory together.

Now, they don’t talk about those old stories. Bringing them up would just be a reminder that the only thing they share happened decades ago.

Something is prying them apart, slowly, day by day, and Steve has no idea what it is. He wonders if he is doing Bucky more harm than good by wanting to be what they were; he wonders if Bucky is here out of obligation, if his love faded years ago and he stays because he’s loyal.

He wonders if Bucky ever loved him the way that Steve loves him, or if it was always just loyalty.

Steve wishes, desperately, that there were an enemy to fight. He wishes that he could bring them back together with a rescue mission, the two of them, a shield and a gun, unstoppable in the face of those who would tear them apart.

Those days are long gone, Steve knows. But still he likes to imagine. He likes to remember.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Steve knows that. But with no enemy to fight, he sits, day after day, eating his dinner in silence, hoping that one day Bucky will tell him how to fix them, how to save them one last time.

He tries to be patient.


End file.
